


a world of gods and monsters

by janie_tangerine



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Horror, M/M, Mild Gore, Resurrection, corpses used in what I wouldn't call ethical ways, don't try to do this at home, possible dub-con elements, questionable ethics all around
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-09
Updated: 2012-02-09
Packaged: 2017-10-30 20:41:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/335846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>wherein Castiel will do anything so that Dean doesn’t stay dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2011 round at deancas_xmas on LJ, for the prompt _19th century body snatching/mad science. Castiel brings Dean back to life_ [with everything it implies - see warnings]. All the supposed scientific/medical procedures in this fic are more or less inspired by _Frankenstein_ (movie-wise) and a lot of other things were inspired by _The Body Snatcher_ , therefore don’t expect anything described in this fic to be even remotely realistic/plausible/with a scientific basis of some sort (same thing about the academia-related part – for one, I’m pretty sure body snatching wasn’t a common practice in Kansas, but just bear with me here).

The clock on the inn’s wall ticks too slow and too fast at the same time.

It’s also next to Castiel’s table and it’s giving him another headache on top of the one he has had since the conversation with his dean this morning.

Sometimes he wishes he never followed the path his family had chosen for him. Other times he wishes that he never took it as diligently as he has until now. (Medicine never was his choice, but he hadn’t even questioned it back then. He also had set to be good at it, if he had to do it.) He’s three months from his thirtieth birthday and he’s already one of the most respected teachers at Lawrence’s university; he burned through his studies, graduating two years before the due date. He doesn’t practice much, since most of his time is devoted to teaching anatomy to new students, but when he does, his patients only have words of praise for him. Of the entire teaching staff, everyone bets that in ten years, fifteen at most, _he_ will become dean; not that everyone ever tells it to his face. Burning through his studies meant that everyone he works with is an acquaintance at best. The people he would call friends can be counted on one hand. Also, since he knows that he’s good at what he does, he never cared much for keeping good social relations.

Today he had enough proof that his attitude hasn’t paid off. At least, he should have tried to stay in the good graces of his dean, Dr. Zachariah Adler, but he hasn’t put much effort in it either way, also because he hasn’t been able to stand the sight of him since Castiel had his first class with him.

It was a very bad idea. If he thinks about this morning’s conversation, his headache gets worse. It’s six in the evening, the forsaken clock informs him; if _he_ ’s late –

The inn’s door closes with a soft thud and Castiel breathes out in relief as he glances at the man coming inside. He has never _seen_ him in person, but from the clothes and the riding crop in his hand, it has to be the one he’s waiting for. Good. It won’t take more than fifteen minutes to settle what has to be settled, which means that when Dean arrives for their weekly meeting he won’t be found speaking with… a possibly compromising person.

“Dr. Milton?” the man asks, sitting in front of him and taking off an old, dusty black hat. The accent sounds British, Castiel notices as he raises his eyes and takes a good look at his future… business partner, he figures. He’s around his late forties, but under his old, dusty black clothes (clean, though) it’s obvious that he’s well built.

 _Of course he would be_ , Castiel reasons, _considering the reasons why I am talking to him in the first place_. He can’t afford to judge now, though; actually, he’ll have to thank Chuck Shurley, Adler’s assistant, for agreeing to give him the name and arranging the whole thing in no more than four hours.

At least his face seems honest enough. He doesn’t look particularly leery or dangerous as he sits back in his chair and flashes Castiel a small, knowing smile. His blue eyes glint in the approaching darkness of the evening.

“That would be me. You are Balthazar, I suppose. And I also suppose you know why I wanted to meet you.”

“Our common friend told me that, yes. And that you are having a disagreement with our very amiable dean, Dr. Adler. Am I wrong?”

“No.” Castiel clears his throat.

“Wouldn’t you employ me for the very same reasons that he employs me, though?”

“It is not enough,” Castiel answers. “The – the corpses you bring him are for _his_ lessons only. Other than me, there are another eight people in the teaching staff. And we are all left with the ones the town administration provides. Which, as you know already, aren’t enough to begin with. And on top of that, I haven’t been able to work on my own research because of it. Of course, my research is nothing in comparison to the entire university’s functioning.”

“So what, dear, you asked Mr. Adler to share his piece of booty?”

Castiel grimaces at the choice of words, but as crude as it is, Balthazar has a point. He also pretends not to have heard the _dear_. He needs Balthazar to work for him – if it means that Balthazar doesn’t understand that it’s a bit too much confidence, then he will endure it.

“He refused. But the situation is… not optimal. We need more corpses. I wish I could say that _I_ needed them for myself, but I cannot think about my needs first when no one else can work in the best conditions.”

Balthazar takes a further sip from the glass of whiskey he had brought to the table and then moves closer, his elbows on the surface, his face inches from Castiel’s. Castiel glances at his hands. They’re rough – but then again, if you drive a carriage during the day and dig out corpses in the night, they’re bound to be.

“How charitable. I indeed perfectly understand your point, Dr. Milton. I think I shall be happy to hear your offer. Because you have one, yes?”

“We need at least eight every two weeks.”

Balthazar nods, finishing his drink. “Well, bugger, I already bring your dean five every two weeks. You do realize that it means digging up a _lot_ of graves, Mr. Milton.”

“How much does he pay you?”

“Two dollars each.”

“I can pay you five each.”

“And that would be out of your own pocket?” Balthazar whistles, sounding slightly impressed. “You do take your job seriously, don’t you.”

“The university needs to _run_. And if no one else will step ahead and if the dean cares more about his career than about his students’ learning, then I have to. Of course, if you accept, you won’t mention any of this to a soul, _including_ Mr. Shurley.”

“But of course, my dear Dr. Milton. Considering how much you’re offering me, I’d be a bloody idiot if I spoke about this to anyone, wouldn’t I.” Balthazar reaches down into his pocket and takes out a crumpled piece of paper and pushes it along the table’s surface. “That’s where you can find my humble abode. I usually am not there between midnight and the wee hours of the morning, but you will most definitely find me there after sunset. Since I don’t think there should be proof of our transactions, you should probably come there directly.”

“I should, indeed,” Castiel sighs. He’d rather do without all this secrecy, and without all the money this ordeal will cost him. But at least he would like to do his job in peace. If it means paying Balthazar for doing things that the same parents that pushed him to be a doctor in the first place would be horrified to hear about… he’ll have to live with it. “Very well. I will see you there in two days to discuss the details of… the deliveries.”

“Splendid,” Balthazar replies, extending his hand. “Maybe we should shake hands on it, yes? You look like someone I can trust without written agreements.”

“Why,” Castiel asks as he shakes Balthazar’s hand – it is rough, “do you have one with the dean?”

Balthazar smiles another thin, sly grin. “Your dean is the kind that would send me to the gallows if he needed it. I’m not the kind of person who does business without some reassurance, Mr. Milton. Or shall I call you Castiel?”

“And you feel that sure about me?”

“Oh, you’re already putting yourself in a difficult position by doing this – why should you have reasons to go on the gallows along with me? That stated, I know where everyone in this city lives.”

“What do you –” Castiel starts to reply, his throat suddenly going dry.

Balthazar sends him that insufferable grin again. “Do you think I don’t know how it ended with Burke and Hare? Where I come from, everyone does. No worries, my dear Dr. Milton, killing people is most definitely not my business. I know where to draw the line. You should learn to appreciate jokes a bit more.”

With that, Balthazar takes his hat, tips it towards Castiel and leaves the inn; Castiel puts his head between his hands, feeling it pound.

 _What did I just do?_ , he asks himself. Balthazar had been right – if someone finds out that he’s doing this, and paying out of his own pocket, they _will_ both end up dead, and he has always considered such things as desecrating graves and stealing bodies disgusting. He remembers the first time he learned where half of the bodies he used to study anatomy on came from in this second year and having to swallow down his instinct to vomit.

He used to think that it was _wrong_.

And look at him now.

Dr. Adler will also be dean for a long time still, on top of that; Castiel wonders when a life that should be fulfilling under every circumstance started feeling as wrong as stealing bodies from graves is.

“Cas? You look _down_.”

Castiel forces himself to smile as he glances at the other side of the table. Or well, he forces himself until he has actually met Dean’s eyes, because then he doesn’t have to force himself anymore. Just hearing Dean shortening his name (no one else ever did that in his family; everyone in Dean’s has done it after Dean started) is enough to lift Castiel’s spirits.

As stated, Castiel’s friends can be counted on one hand. Dean Winchester is in that number, and also has the dubious honor of having been the first to be counted in that category. They used to be neighbors; the Winchesters owned the guns shop next to the law practice belonging to Castiel’s father and an associate. Both families lived above the shop and the office respectively, and while Castiel’s parents had never approved of him and Dean being friends, it was the one thing Castiel never wanted to hear anything about. He used to be on his own most of the time when he was a child, the same as now, but one day Dean had ended up talking to him while Castiel was reading his book – they were both five but Dean couldn’t read yet and wanted to know what it was about – and they have been friends ever since. Dean’s brother Sam is one of the other few people Castiel would count among the people he doesn’t consider acquaintances, but Dean is the only person he’s ever been close to.

Not to mention that he’s the reason Castiel still hasn’t done the last thing his parents are asking of him now – marrying a nice, possibly rich girl (or at least from what they consider a good family) and give them grandchildren. Not that they strictly need more of them – his brothers Michael and Raphael, who inherited the firm, and his sister Anna, who has married another lawyer, have enough children themselves, but apparently he’s supposed to follow their example.

Oh, if his family knew of what he thinks every time his eyes meet Dean’s gorgeous green ones they’d recoil in horror and find the whole grave-robbing affair a thing of no matter.

“It wasn’t a good day, I’m afraid,” Castiel answers, realizing that the beer he had ordered before is still almost all in the glass.

“What, your dean again?” Dean makes a disgusted face as the bartender leaves a glass of whiskey in front of him. “I hoped that I would stop hearin’ about him after you weren’t his student anymore.”

“I wish,” Castiel replies. Dean _is_ right – he did complain about Dr. Adler enough when he was still studying and Dean was already working in his father’s shop. Castiel envies him sometimes. Running a store isn’t anywhere as hard as dealing with his petty dean, his petty colleagues and having to buy dead bodies in order to do your job. Of course, Dean has entirely different problems. Castiel shouldn’t complain. “Today I asked him if he would please consider taking care of the small matter that eight people can’t work with three corpses every two weeks only, and he kindly told me that we don’t have the resources to provide more and I should stop expecting to be handed things on a silver platter.”

“Weren’t you making plans to research something?”

Castiel snorts – right. He’s currently trying to treat a child with a degenerative disease that progressively paralyzed his spine, and he thinks that given enough time he _could_ come up with a way to operate it, but that isn’t going to happen in a long time.

“That will not happen anytime soon. But enough about me. Tell me about what happened to you. I can’t think about any kind of sickness anymore for today. Or about corpses.”

“I can believe it,” Dean agrees as he takes a sip. Castiel tries not to stare at his Adam’s apple as he swallows. “Well, the only big news is that my stupid little brother finally asked Jess to marry her.”

“But that’s wonderful!” Castiel exclaims, and he really is happy to hear it. It’s the first good news he’s heard today, for one; and he remembers Sam starting to speak fondly about that same girl at least five years ago. He has met her maybe twice, but she seemed quite lovely, and definitely fond of Sam as well. It’s not every day that two people who genuinely love each other marry, or at least it isn’t every day for Castiel. The last few weddings he has attended were all of family members, and feelings had not been contemplated in all of them. “You could have come and told me, though.”

“He only said that it was a done deal yesterday evening. And you remember what happened that last time I came by and that friend of your mother’s living in the house near yours told your brother.” Dean says it like it’s no big deal, but Castiel knows it is. He also hates that Raphael still thinks that he has any business with Castiel’s private matters. He has heard enough times the speech about needing to be in _his_ circle, talking to people _his_ status rather than wasting time with people like Dean Winchester. (They all like Sam slightly better, since he did go to law school; they have no idea about the sacrifices that everyone in the family went through to find the money, but Castiel never tried to explain it to them. It’d be worthless.)

If only they knew. Dean’s lips are wet when he puts his half-drunk glass down on the table’s surface. They’re so red and soft, and Castiel sometimes wishes that he could reach out and trace them. Or that he could be so bold to move forward and kiss them, obviously not in a public setting, but he knows it’s never going to happen. He wouldn’t dare saying it or even implying that he has never looked at a woman and found her beautiful in the way he’s supposed to.

He won’t ever tell Dean that he’s been dreaming about him rather than about any girl he has known since he was sixteen or so. Oh, he would know that Dean wouldn’t care – apparently some cousin of his on his mother’s side was found in a… compromising situation and when word got out, he had secretly told Castiel that he never understood why _not_. Sure, he never would do it, but what’d change for anyone else? He doesn’t feel… guilty about it, even if everything he has been taught tells him that he should. But whenever he looks at Dean he wonders how it could possibly be a bad thing to love someone as beautiful as he is.

That’s not the matter. Castiel knows that if he told Dean half the truth, at some point the second half would come out and he doesn’t want to go there. Ever.

“You know that I don’t care, but I understand it. I still hope I will be allowed to come to the wedding, though.”

Dean’s laugh is small but it lights up his eyes and face, and _if only_ Castiel could kiss that smiling mouth. “Of course you are, what a question. It might even do you good, to get out of that gloom you live in.”

Dean doesn’t know how right he is, Castiel muses. Between the university and his own house, which is too big for him to live in alone (but since it’s comfortable enough and in a decent position he has never searched for another) sometimes he feels as if he lives in a grave.

“And what about you?”

Dean shakes his head. “Nothin’ new. Or nothin’ that interesting, anyway. The shop’s doing fine. I might start earning something again for real soon.”

Of course, Castiel thinks, they had put a mortgage on the shop in order to pay for Sam’s studies. Dean had it extinguished a couple of months ago.

“Then… well, my dad is still braggin’ at me after it ended up badly with Lisa, but you know, if you find out that you’re both thinking about marrying only because you think you _should_ and we happened to like each other enough… you know, right?”

Castiel nods. He knows. Indeed.

“Anyway. Maybe now that Sam will give him some grandchildren, he’ll stop waitin’ for me to do it. But apart from that… it’s all right. Could be worse, could be better, but I can’t complain. Hey, I wouldn’t want to deal with what you get, that’s for sure.”

Anyone else would have felt offended, but Castiel knows the tone – Dean is merely joking and if he was in his own place, he’d say exactly the same thing.

He takes a sip of his now lukewarm beer, and the silence between them is companionable rather than uncomfortable. Castiel should probably be worried that the only part of the week he looks forward to is Thursday evening, when he and Dean meet regularly, but he can’t bring himself to care.

\--

Two days later, he meets Balthazar outside his house as Balthazar leaves it. They settle on a day every two weeks for Balthazar to bring the corpses and for Castiel to pay him. It’s good to know in advance, he figures, also because he can make sure that he’s alone to receive the carriage driver.

The entire business still leaves him with a bad taste in his mouth, but in the following month work is a lot easier, there’s not arguing between teachers anymore and Dr. Adler cares about what happens in his own faculty so much that he doesn’t even notice that there are more bodies available than they should.

He still wishes he could use them for his research, but everyone’s benefit comes before his own.

\--

“You know,” Dean tells him three Thursdays later, “this whole marriage thing is making me feel envious. Don’t tell Sam though. He’d try to make me feel better.”

“Envious because you wish to marry, as well?” Castiel tries not to sound as if he’s discontent.

“It’s not even that. It’s… I’m happy for him. I am. They love each other and that’s hard ‘nough to find, I guess. I wish I found that, too, at some point, but I’m not even sure that it’s ever happening.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Castiel replies. True, Dean _hasn’t_ managed to find someone, arranged or not, since they were old enough to care about girls that way; the closest he came to proposing was with Lisa Braeden, but that didn’t go through in the end. Sometimes Castiel wonders _why_ – Dean is certainly handsome, he has a good position even if he might not be extremely rich, when he cares about someone he gives all of himself for them, and he’s the best person Castiel knows. He doesn’t understand why whenever he seems to like someone it always ends before it can get somewhere.

“I’m not. Just statin’ the obvious. Then again maybe it’s meant to be. And – well. My family is fine, we’ve had some tough times but things are picking up, my little brother is happy, I have at least one good friend, I shouldn’t complain too much.”

Castiel’s heart swells a bit at that – it shouldn’t make him happy, but… he can’t help it. Whenever Dean says things like that, and it happens only when he has drunk more than usual, it always makes him feel as if at least someone values him for what he is rather than for what he’s doing with his life. Another thing he has never understood is why Dean doesn’t have that many friends as well – he always was a lot more inclined to _talk_ to people than Castiel, but Castiel has never pried into that either. Dean usually says that he never had much time for other people, not since Mary Winchester died run over by a carriage when Dean was eight and Sam was four, and Castiel knows well enough that from that moment Dean spent his life mostly caring about raising his brother and worrying about getting food on the table while their dad cared for the shop. And that had drastically lessened the time Dean had for other people, as he puts it.

Still, sometimes Castiel wishes that he had the courage to say it. To tell Dean that _he_ could be that person he wants, that his fingers itch to touch him in ways that wouldn’t be considered appropriate even between two friends, that maybe the fact that neither of them can be with anyone else means _something_. (Maybe the fact that Castiel has never even kissed a woman or had one means something, too. Dean knows, of course. Once he even tried to bring Castiel to a brothel, which has been referred to as den of iniquity ever since, and it ended up so badly that he never tried again.)

But he doesn’t. He will never. He knows that. As much as he knows that this is all wishful thinking.

Dean can’t know, and won’t know, and Castiel shouldn’t fall prey to his own desires.

He should worry about what present he should get Sam and Jessica for their marriage instead. It’s in three months, but he should start to look around. He likes to be ahead of things instead of arriving at the last minute.

\--

Three Thursdays after, Castiel sits in the inn knowing that he looks more similar to one of Balthazar’s bodies rather than to a respectable human being. Dr. Adler has started to suspect something and obviously he has called Castiel into his office and tried to find out if he knows why the town administration is suddenly sending in more corpses, and that lasted enough to leave him wiped. Of course, he had two classes to teach later, ant to tell the mother of that child he was trying to treat that won’t be able to operate because he has nothing to research on. By the time he’s arrived to his and Dean’s usual meeting spot he’s dead tired and hoping that Dean has something fun to report to him today. He needs a laugh, or a reason to smile. Just seeing Dean’s face would be enough, but….

The clock ticks, slowly but steadily, and Dean doesn’t come.

 

It’s eight in the evening when Castiel gives up and decides to go to the guns shop; maybe Dean got caught up in business and he couldn’t close early. 

When he walks there he finds out that it’s closed. He goes upstairs, where Dean lives with his father, but when he knocks on the door, no one answers.

Then the door of the apartment in front of the Winchester one opens. Castiel turns towards it.

“Castiel?”

It’s Ellen Harvelle, who has rented that apartment since Castiel can remember and since her husband (with whom she ran a small inn, the Roadhouse, on the other side of the street) died because of a fever some ten years ago; now she runs the inn with her daughter, Joanna. Dean usually has dinner and lunch there, whenever he isn’t meeting Castiel in their usual place.

“Ellen. I was wondering – did something happen to Dean? We were supposed to meet, but he never showed up.”

Ellen’s face is pale as she shakes his head. “Dean – he was goin’ out of the store to grab something to eat at my place. There was this carriage driver goin’ too fast because apparently he needed to bring someone important someplace quickly – he ran right over him.”

“You can’t – he’s in the hospital, he has to –

“He died a minute after it happened,” Ellen says quietly. “His father’s gone to the hospital, ‘course, but to see if there’s someone that can… well. Fix him up before they bury him. It wasn’t pretty.”

Castiel doesn’t even hear the last half of the sentence.

As soon as Ellen says _he died_ , his blood turns to ice and his knees give out, and he has to steady himself against the wall to avoid crashing down on the floor.

\--

The funeral is on the next day.

It’s the second-worst day of Castiel’s life.

He gets someone to cover for his classes after a lot of bribing and promises, and there aren’t many attendants. John Winchester, who looks seventy instead of fifty-five, Sam and Jessica, who look devastated (Castiel thinks for a second about how sad their wedding will end up being, too, and it makes him want to cry all over again, especially because it had every reason to be a joyful one), the Harvelles, Lisa Braeden, a couple of other girls that Dean had been half-serious with. Bobby Singer, an old friend of John Winchester’s. Castiel, too. No one else.

The ceremony is also short and not particularly moving, since Dean hadn’t set foot in a church since his mother died and the preacher knew it too well.

Castiel wishes that at least the grave wasn’t composed of just one stone with only the name and the dates of birth and death, but he knew better than to offer to pay for it.

 _Dean Winchester, Jan. 24th, 1863 – May 2nd, 1892._ It doesn’t say nearly enough.

He stands next to Sam while Dean is buried, and neither of them tries to hide that they’re both crying.

“You know,” Sam says after the preacher is done speaking, “I feel so useless. I don’t think that Dean would have wanted us all to cry.”

Castiel nods, remembering one conversation they had when they were fourteen or so. “Once he told me that he hoped people would laugh at his funeral. Obviously he was supposed to have led a long and happy life and they would have laughed because they would only talk about good things.”

“It’s so –” Sam starts, choking back a sob. “He didn’t – he _deserved_ a long life. He had just stopped paying off the mortgage. And that son of a bitch who ran him over – well, not the driver. The guy on the carriage. You know what he told my dad? He ran out on the street, he heard the noise from inside the house.”

“What did he say?”

“That Dean should have watched the road. Ellen saw it all. When he started walking, there was no one in sight. And then he complained that he had to go because he was late for some academic meeting. Can you believe it?”

Sam sounds outraged and Castiel is starting to suspect that he might know who was on that carriage.

“Was that – a man in his fifties, some six inches taller than me, with bald hair and – wearing a top hat?”

“Yes. He said he didn’t need another corpse to deal with, apparently – Cas?”

Castiel realizes that he has just stopped dead in his tracks.

He won’t tell Sam that it was his own dean, but the bile that he had felt rising towards his mouth already tastes a lot more bitter right now.

And meanwhile, as he watches earth being thrown over the coffin, he feels as if half of him is gone. He thinks about what is his life going to be now. No more Thursday evenings passed in companionable silence, no more Dean calling him _Cas_ , no more Dean making his day better by smiling at him. The only person who has ever made his life a _good_ place to be is gone, and Castiel isn’t sure that he can accept it now. Or ever.

\--

While he walks back home, he thinks about how Dean had looked when they closed the coffin over his face. John Winchester couldn’t find anyone to _fix_ him right; there wasn’t blood anymore, and they had buried him in his best clothes, but Dean’s ear had still been half torn, his nose still visibly broken and his lower lip split. His fingers were all bent wrong, as if someone had broken them and didn’t bother to fix them. Maybe, Castiel thinks bitterly, now he won’t even get to rest there. Maybe his body will end up on either Castiel’s or Zachariah’s table, since it’s not as if Balthazar looks at the names before starting to dig. For a second Castiel feels guilty because he _knows_ how the loved ones of the people he dissects in order to explain anatomy to his students feel, but it isn’t nearly enough for his mind to drift from the subject it has fixated itself on.

Dean deserved better.

He deserved better than being run over by the person that Castiel loathes most on this planet, he deserved better than being buried under a heavy rain with only a few people attending, he deserved more than a simple stone, he deserved that long and happy life he had wanted. He deserved to find that person who’d love him the way he wanted (even if it couldn’t have ever been Castiel himself), he deserved to spend a lot more Thursdays drinking quietly together with Castiel at their table.

He deserved life, and no one can give it back to him now. It’s gone. All gone.

 

_Is it?_

 

The thought hits Castiel with such a force that he has to stop in the middle of the street, as he walks back to the university.

 _Of course_ , is the first answer he gives himself as he starts walking again, forcing himself to. _Life is life and death is death. I learned that first thing. Only God can take it or give it._

Except, except, _except_. Which God takes away Dean and leaves Dr. Adler alive? Castiel isn’t sure that he can buy the answer that all the best die young because God wants them with him. That’s pretty selfish, for one, and God should be above something as petty as selfishness. Dean shouldn’t have died, but he _had_ and Castiel can’t accept that it has a _sense_. If there’s a God somewhere, He’s not here. That, Castiel can be sure of. He has never doubted of His existence, because after all if someone like Dean was in his life then someone up there surely must have liked Castiel enough, but right now he’s tempted to change his mind at least a little.

Still, it changes nothing. Bringing someone back to life is impossible. He shouldn’t even –

 _Didn’t you want to research on how to bring back to life dead tissue?_ , a traitorous little voice asks him. _If you can bring dead tissue back to life, how hard can it be to do bring someone back altogether?_

Castiel tries to silence it. Dead tissue is something, a _brain_ is another.

_And the child you wanted to save had an injury in his spinal cord. It’s still nerves that you have to fix, isn’t it?_

As Castiel walks into the building and takes off his sopping wet coat, he’s desperately trying not to give in to the temptation. It’s insane. It’s _immoral_. It’s against nature. It’s against _everything_ Castiel has been taught, it’s against every sense, you can heal damaging tissue but you can’t do it when there’s no other support system, and yet –

_And yet he didn’t deserve to die, and all the people who taught you that playing with life and death was immoral are still living and didn’t really think much of him, did they? Do they deserve to live while he deserves to rot in that pitiful grave of his?_

“Milton?”

Castiel stops dead in his tracks in the main hallway as he walks to the third class he should have given today, which will technically be his first.

“Dr. Adler. Is there a problem?”

“I’ve heard that you weren’t here this morning and that someone else had to cover for you. You could have bothered to inform me.”

“I am sorry. I had a funeral to attend and it was very sudden. I could not find you when I was here this morning and I couldn’t –”

“ _Next time_ , you will warn,” Adler hisses. “Especially when it’s not a funeral you are strictly required to attend.”

“Excuse me?”

“If someone in your family had died, I would have known.”

“It was a friend,” Castiel replies, realizing just after he said it that he shouldn’t have. Adler doesn’t care about it, and when he hears someone snickering behind him and whisper _oh, so he does have some friends after all_ , something inside him twists. _A friend that died because of you,_ he doesn’t add.

“Next time, you _will_ come to me first. As if I need more problems with you after yesterday.”

“What… what happened yesterday, if I may ask?”

Adler snorts, and Castiel wishes he never asked that question a second after it leaves his mouth. “I was late coming here and someone ended up under my carriage. Well, thankfully he was a no one – he should have watched the road. And now go do your job.”

By the time Castiel has reached the classroom, he has taken a decision.

It might be insane, and if there’s a God and a Heaven and a Hell this will damn his soul forever, but if he _can_ do it, or try to, then nothing else matters.

\--

That evening, he goes straight to Balthazar’s house. He knocks twice, hard; Balthazar opens the door promptly, a cat nestled in the crook of his arm, and he raises an eyebrow a second after his eyes meet Castiel’s.

“Now that’s a surprise. I hadn’t thought this was our meeting day, dear.”

“Things are changed,” Castiel replies. “I need your help.”

“ _You_ need _my_ help, dear?” Balthazar’s voice is midway between amused and surprised as he lets Castiel in. “Well then, welcome in, my friend. Let’s see what little old me can do for you, yes? Please, take a seat.”

Castiel can’t help noticing that even if the house is small, it’s very neat. It’s only one room, with a bed in the corner and a stove in the opposite one. There are quite a lot of books lying around – more than he’d have expected. There’s also a table with some quite good bottle of brandy on it, he notices. And there’s a lone stocking that most definitely belongs to a woman half-hidden under the bed, only part of it visible on the floor. It’s no matter. This isn’t what he came here for. If Balthazar wants to be comfortable with the considerable extra money he earns from his secondary job, or to pay a woman with it, he’s welcome to use it in any way he wishes.

Castiel sits on an old but comfortable and clean armchair in front of a fireplace. Balthazar takes a twin one on the opposite side, the cat still in his lap. He hands Castiel a glass filled with the brandy that was on the table.

“That’s on me,” Balthazar says amiably. “After all, it’s mostly thanks to you that I can afford it, so it’s only right that I offer you some. So, what’s your problem, Castiel?”

Castiel tries not to mind that Balthazar thinks they’re on a first name basis right now. “I told you that I needed bodies for my research.”

“But you were renouncing it.”

“Well, I changed my mind. I will need a _lot_ more corpses. And they should be for me only. I also need you to help me in person for at least one thing, if you will accept.”

“That’s not much to go on, I’m afraid. How can I decide to accept or not if you don’t tell me what it is that you need? Other than… a whole bloody lot of corpses, I figure.”

Castiel ponders how much he should tell.

Then again, he can’t dig Dean out of his grave on his own.

“If I pay you fifteen dollars for each corpse and another ten for that help in person, would you accept?”

Balthazar’s eyes glint at that, and Castiel thinks that he looks eerily similar to the cat he’s holding close. “My, my. I suppose that for that price I could do it. And if I decide not to, you can be assured that whatever information you share won’t leave these walls.”

It has to be enough.

“I need you to help me dig out a certain coffin and to put the grave back as it was. Then I need help bringing it to my home.”

“Well, other than a carriage I also own a small wagon. I suppose that could be done. The problem is of a different kind.”

“Which would be?”

“Well, I provide corpses for your dean and for you lot already. For your teaching purposes. If you need more, I am not sure I can do this without raising a lot of attention. Which I am quite sure you don’t want.”

Castiel had figured that it would be a problem.

Fine then.

“You can bring me the ones I already paid you for and a couple more, all at the new price. Adler can keep his. I will take a leave of absence. A long one.”

“You sound like a man on a mission,” Balthazar replies, putting the cat down and looking straight at him. “Very well, that’s settled. You’re paying, you decide. But are you going on your mission alone?”

“I am,” Castiel replies. He could do with help, but he isn’t about to risk asking anyone that he knows.

“Fine. Do you need to do this… digging now?”

“As soon as you deem safe.”

“In a couple of hours then. It should be all good, especially with this weather. No one will be around, in this rain. And well, I suppose that if you need further help, you could always ask me. I won’t raise your price.”

“I’ll think about it,” Castiel cuts short. He isn’t sure that he wants to get deeper into this with Balthazar, but the offer is tempting. After all, Balthazar has nothing to lose, as much as he doesn’t, not with what he’s getting into. He decides not to rule out the option completely.

Who knows.

He’s compromised enough already. But if it means that he can bring Dean back, then he doesn’t care.

\--

Two hours and a half later, he thinks he might be growing a new respect for both Balthazar and his secondary profession. His arms are hurting from all the digging, and the fact that it’s raining isn’t helping much at all. Balthazar is looking at him in a way Castiel can’t describe properly, since it’s not clear whether he’s impressed with Castiel for getting his hands dirty or if he pities him because he’s lousy at this. They’re done uncovering the coffin only because Balthazar did three quarters of the job, after all.

“You know,” Balthazar says as he motions for Castiel to lower himself into the hole they just dug in order to take the coffin out of it, “I was wondering what’s so special about this particular person.”

“Not your business,” Castiel blurts as he grabs his side of the coffin and hauls it up on his shoulder as Balthazar does the same.

“Suit yourself. You seem quite invested. Is someone you particularly wish to dissect? They must have been special.”

Castiel snorts as they push the coffin out of the hole. “The contrary.”

He doesn’t offer more and Balthazar doesn’t ask; when Balthazar gets out of the hole first and offers him a hand to help him out, Castiel doesn’t refuse it.

“Listen, do we need to cover it up? This job is filthy enough without –”

“Yes,” Castiel replies without hesitation. Dean’s family has suffered enough, they don’t need to think that Dean’s grave has been violated. “It’s an extra five dollars, if you need further convincing.”

“In this case I might reconsider,” Balthazar replies casually, and Castiel grabs his shovel again. Another half hour and everything is covered again; sure, it’s not exactly as it had been before, but no one will notice. Thankfully the ground was still fresh when they came here. They put the coffin on the back of Balthazar’s wagon and Castiel sits on Balthazar’s side as they ride outside the graveyard.

“Something tells me that this is personal,” Balthazar whispers as they head for Castiel’s house. “Isn’t it?”

“Why would you care?” Castiel replies.

“Well, considering how rich this business is going to make me, it might be that I’m interested in what exactly is going through your brilliant mind. But by all means, keep your secrets.”

Castiel is afraid that he won’t get to keep them hidden from long, not from Balthazar at least, since he needs him.

But everything in good time.

\--

Castiel’s house is a family property – his grandfather had it built on what used to be the outskirts of town in order to use it during the summer. This before the city got big enough that the location couldn’t be considered in the countryside anymore, but since no one was living in it permanently and Castiel found the position comfortable enough, no one objected when he asked to use it as a residence. No one had used it in years.

That’s not the entire point. The point is that Castiel’s grandfather also liked to offer huge dinners to the entirety of his neighborhood during the summer, provided that they were rich enough, and there’s an ice cellar that was once used to store meat. No one has used it for a while, or at least not to store the quantities of meat it once used to, but it’s still functioning and it’s going to work perfectly for what Castiel needs. He and Balthazar drag it downstairs and Castiel tells him to leave it there. He’s going to deal with it later. He hands Balthazar a handful of bills before Balthazar leaves and tells him he will be back tomorrow night.

Tomorrow night is good, Castiel thinks. Tomorrow night means that he has what remains of this one and all of tomorrow to make plans.

Before attempting to do anything, though, he throws away his now useless clothes – they’re covered in mud and earth, and he’s _filthy_. He’s not going to even touch Dean’s body while covered in this. He draws himself a bath, glad that he never wanted to hire someone to do such things for him. The less people around, the better.

After he cleans himself up, he puts on some old but still good clothes, picks a bag with his instruments and goes downstairs.

He breaks the coffin open and he wants to cry at the sight. Thankfully, a few hours haven’t done much damage, but whatever had been done to fix Dean’s face before he was buried hasn’t lasted.

It’s nothing of import, Castiel figures.

After all, he has spent the last ten years working with corpses.

John Winchester might as well have asked him. He’d have done a much better job.

\--

He spends the entire night trying to fix what can be fixed of Dean’s injuries, only a small lamp oscillating from the ceiling to light the entire cellar. It’s cold, probably as cold as Hell’s deepest level (where Castiel is probably headed), but Castiel couldn’t care less, not when he has tears in Dean’s skin to mend and bones to fix, as much as he can. Not when he also has to determine the precise cause of death – he’s never going to manage this if he has no idea where to start from.

When he closes the cellar door as the sun is rising, he has stitched every tear in Dean’s skin that could be stitched, and he’s positive that it was because of spinal fracture. Dean was literally run over, the carriage’s wheels passing over his back and snapping the spinal cord in two. The driver hadn’t even tried to stop, he thinks bitterly. Maybe if he had tried, or if the carriage had only hit Dean instead of running over him, he might have been paralyzed instead of dead.

Oh, but he _will_ fix it.

Castiel goes to his bedroom, sits at his desk and writes one letter to Dr. Adler and another ten or so to the people he was treating. The first is about the leave of absence, the others kindly ask his patients to come directly to his home for the visits.

Who knows. Maybe, in this entire ordeal, he might learn enough to help that child he couldn’t treat before.

He mails them, and then he walks back home and heads for his bedroom again.

He won’t be of help to anyone if he isn’t well rested this evening.

He dreams that it’s a Thursday and that he and Dean are having their weekly drink, Dean’s eyes laughing and Castiel’s heart pounding slightly harder than its usual.

\--

That evening, there’s a knock on the back entrance.

When Castiel opens it, Balthazar is there with his wagon, a blanket covering the contents.

“I figured you might prefer discretion,” Balthazar explains, still smiling that small, knowing smile. “So, where do these two go?”

“Cellar,” Castiel replies. Obviously, the part that wasn’t used to store meat. “I will take one.”

“You _really_ are willing to get your hands dirty, aren’t you?” Balthazar chuckles, putting one of the bodies on his shoulder as Castiel takes the other.

“It’s worth it,” Castiel says as he leads the way. He has dragged down two huge tables that were once used for his grandfather’s dinners.

They will have to do.

When they’re done, there are two blanket-wrapped bundles on the two tables. Castiel’s hands are itching to _cut_.

“That will be all?” Balthazar asks, his hand outstretched.

“For now,” Castiel confirms handing him another pair of bills.

“Well, dear doctor, you know where to find me if you need something else. You know, I like people who are willing to get their hands dirty. I might be even willing to dispose of what you don’t need anymore for free. If not… I will see you in another four days.”

\--

He turns the first body on its stomach. It’s a woman around fifty, with a stab wound in her heart.

He should feel sorry, but he can’t allow himself to feel anything right now.

He thinks about the night after he finally obtained his degree. Dean had insisted on buying him a drink at the place where they used to see each other every week; Castiel remembers how Dean’s arm had felt around his shoulder, about the way he laughed. He remembers that Dean got drunk a lot faster than Castiel did, and Castiel had to drag him home, but it wasn’t a hardship. Not at all. Not when he had Dean’s side against his, warm and there and _alive_.

He grabs his scalpel and cuts.

\--

Three days later, he receives a letter from Dr. Adler, requiring that he come back to his job immediately.

Castiel tears it in pieces and doesn’t answer it.

In the afternoon, he takes a pause to visit one of his patients upstairs and for a light dinner. When he gets back into the cellar, he barely glances at his grandfather’s tables and at the bodies on them – the first one he dissected is covered now, he doesn’t have a use for it anymore – and walks inside the ice cellar.

It is working – Dean’s body is still in good enough condition. Of course, there are scars on his hands, and the stitches will have to stay because the skin didn’t reform itself under them, and he’s pale, so very pale, his lips almost blue, his eyes closed.

Castiel runs a finger over Dean’s cold, cold bottom lip, once, as he has always wanted to when he was alive.

Oh, but he will be again if it’s the last thing Castiel does. He only needs to find out how.

And fast, he reasons – the more Dean stays dead, the more there could be complications. He might have to replace some organs – who knows if any are failed?

He will take care of that when time comes, though.

\--

He pays John Winchester a visit the next morning, in the shop. Dean and Sam’s father still looks fifteen years older than he is as he welcomes Castiel in and turns the sign on the door on _closed_.

“I don’t think I have to ask you how you are doing,” Castiel says. John gives him a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

“’Course you don’t have to. You know how I’m doing. Because you’re doing the same damn way,” John answers, and Castiel can’t deny that. Not when he’s been feeling half empty since the second he learned that Dean was gone.

“It’s that – Sam is trying to see if at least he can corner that bastard who was on the carriage, but I doubt it’s gonna end well. I should’ve never survived him.”

Castiel has doubts that Sam is ever going to manage it. He wishes it could happen, but this isn’t how life goes.

John goes to a cupboard in the corner and takes out a bottle of whiskey and a couple of glasses, offering Castiel one wordlessly. Castiel takes it.

“To Dean,” John mutters as the glasses clink against each other. “I can’t even say whoever he is. If Dean was right, then he’s nowhere right now.”

The words are there on the tip of Castiel’s tongue, itching to be left free. _He’s in my basement, actually. And if everything goes right…_

But he doesn’t say anything.

He wishes he could, but it’s better that he keeps this secret.

The whiskey burns down his throat, but when he leaves, after promising John that he will drop by soon, his step is steady. He always had a good tolerance.

\--

The second body is a man in his mid-thirties. His neck is broken. Fell down from the stairs, Castiel figures.

An accident.

How unfortunate. A small, faint voice asks him, _how is it that they both died because of accidents, but you’ll never try to bring_ him _back?_

He isn’t Dean.

He thinks about one time when they were fourteen. Or better, Dean was about to turn fourteen but that year had seen less earnings than usual, and he wouldn’t receive anything for his birthday. When Dean had told him that, always shrugging as if it didn’t matter, Castiel had gifted him on the spot his copy of _The Adventures of Tom Sawyer_ , which he had lent Dean at least ten times before. Dean had looked at him with such thankfulness, Castiel hadn’t even known what to answer. His heart had started beating slightly faster. He recalls that moment as clearly as if it had happened yesterday.

He cuts.

\--

One week after he closes himself in his own house, he receives a letter from Michael. He reads it once. His family is concerned after Dr. Adler contacted them because of Castiel’s odd behavior. At some point, it’s said that they hope it’s not because Dean Winchester is dead – surely Castiel has more important matters to think about, including his reputation.

He tears it in pieces and doesn’t answer it, either.

When, half an hour later, he uncovers one of the bodies Balthazar brought in yesterday to find himself in front of a kid that can’t be older than fifteen, who has most definitely died of polio, his throat tightens. _What am I doing?_ he thinks. But then he remembers Dean the first time they met, telling Castiel that he wanted to be friends, and he cuts.

\--

After another visit to one of his patients, he decides that he should go see Sam. They haven’t seen each other since the funeral and he should go.

Sam lives in a small house, not too far from the shop. It’s a nice place, Castiel always thinks whenever he visits there. It’s definitely not a mansion, but it has two floors, nice furnishing, and it’s perfect for housing three people comfortably.

Castiel knows that Jessica is supposed to move there after the wedding. If the wedding happens anytime soon, he ponders as he knocks on the door. It’s early in the evening, and the light is on, so Sam should be –

“Cas,” Sam says with a small smile after opening the door. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I thought I would visit. If I’m not –”

“Of course not, come in. Can I offer you anything?”

“No, thank you. But you can tell me how you’re doing.”

Sam sends a small smile his way as he motions for Castiel to sit on an armchair in front of the living room’s fireplace. He takes another next to it. “Not so good. I mean, it’s so _strange_ – Dean was always there for my entire life and now he’s gone just like that. If only it had had some sense I could begin to let it go, but… I can’t accept it.”

“I’ve been thinking the same,” Castiel replies quietly. More than that, but there’s no need to dwell into that now. “It’s… it feels empty, doesn’t it?”

“So much,” Sam agrees. “We… me and Jess are taking another six months. I mean, from the planned date.”

“For the wedding?”

“Yes. I can’t – it was supposed to be three months from now, but I’m not sure I can do it so soon. I was afraid to ask, actually, you don’t know how excited we both were, but she was the one suggesting it first. He was supposed to be my best man,” Sam whispers as he looks down at the ashes in the fireplace.

Castiel wishes he could tell him, _he might be, if I have a say in it_ , but even if he managed to do the unthinkable, he isn’t so sure that it would be wise if it was to happen.

It occurs to him that if he’s successful, it will be a problem to find a way to tell Dean’s family without any other fuss happening – he might be doing something insane, but Castiel knows too well that if Dean _did_ come back and it became public, it would be a disaster. Castiel himself would be arrested at best and find himself with a noose around his neck at worst, Dean would spend his life with scientists observing him and maybe managing to kill him all over again, and if anyone else found out how Castiel did it (not that he has an idea for now) it could bring to disastrous conclusions.

 _Stop it now_ , the traitorous small voice says. _You can’t handle the consequences._

 _I will deal with the consequences after_ , he thinks, silencing it.

It’s not as if it isn’t all moot, if in the end he can’t bring Dean back after all.


	2. Chapter 2

One week and a half in, and he realizes that he needs help.

First thing, with Balthazar coming in twice each week, he’s left with useless bodies in his cellar after he’s done with them until Balthazar comes to _dispose_ of them. Castiel doesn’t even want to know how he does that – it’s no matter.

Second thing, between noting down his observations and dissecting on his own, it’s taking him a lot more time than it’s acceptable. If someone else did the cutting for him, or wrote for him, it would be extremely faster.

Third thing, he still isn’t _there_ yet and he needs to be quicker. What he knows now is considerably more than before, and he thinks that he _could_ help that child now, but it doesn’t change much. Operating on someone _alive_ is a thing, death is an entire different matter.

Still, it’s worth a try. If it works, it means he’s one step closer.

He sends a letter to the child’s mother, asking her to come to see him as soon as possible, and then when Balthazar shows up that evening to dispose of the remains, Castiel takes a very deep breath.

“You said that you might be available for further helping me,” Castiel tells him as Balthazar drops his bundle of blanket and corpse into the wagon.

“I did say it, yes. And how would you need it?”

“Can you write?” He doesn’t ask whether he can read – that was obvious from the books in Balthazar’s house.

“I can write,” Balthazar replies.

“Could you cut a body, if I told you where and how?”

“I’ve done worse.”

“Come here tomorrow with whatever you need, then. I will need you to stay here for the next couple of weeks. You name your price.”

“I could name it tomorrow evening.”

“As you wish,” Castiel agrees. He can’t afford wasting more time.

\--

Three days later, he’s back at the university along with his little patient and his mother.

Dr. Adler, of course, is furious.

“Milton, you can’t just use this place as your own study! You don’t show up for a month without giving me a rightful explanation and then you… come here saying that you have to perform a dangerous procedure and need the equipment? What’s _wrong_ with you?”

“I might have performed that procedure months ago, if you had agreed to my request for using some of those bodies for my own research. Nothing is wrong with me. Actually… everything is quite right,” he answers before turning his back on Dr. Adler and heading for the room he has managed to reserve.

\--

It works.

\--

He doesn’t go back to teaching, tough. After seeing the child he operated take his first steps two days after the procedure, Castiel goes back home and into the cellar to find Balthazar running through his journal.

Castiel can’t even tell him not to do it, since Balthazar has written a good portion of it in the last few days. And he was right – having someone taking notes for him has sped the entire process up.

“One would think that you aren’t only researching a way to treat spinal injuries,” Balthazar says as Castiel takes off his jacket. Under it, he wears a ruined dress shirt that he only puts on to do his dirty business.

Castiel shrugs, taking the blanket off the corpse laying on the table. It’s a man in his mid-thirties, his neck broken. From the scar around it, it’s obvious that he was hanged.

“I brought that one in yesterday evening,” Balthazar explains, sitting at the other table, pen and ink in hand. “He used to be a colleague. I don’t envy him. There’s a reason why I never drive fast.”

“Why, what did he do?” Castiel asks, not really caring as he turns the body over and getting ready to cut from the neck downwards.

“Some rich person said that he’d pay him double if it got him somewhere fast. He ran over this guy who was crossing the road and killed him on the spot. Rich person told him not to mind and to go ahead, but apparently the brother of the dead guy works for some lawyer and didn’t let that go. They needed a head and of course they wouldn’t get the sodding rich person, right?”

 _So that’s the driver who killed Dean_ , Castiel thinks, and all the coincidences have started being too much. He isn’t feeling any kind of happiness at seeing him dead on his table though – it wasn’t _his_ fault, strictly.

Castiel wishes he could find a way to make Dr. Adler pay, but all in good time.

All in good time.

Then the other lone light bulb oscillating from the ceiling dies and leaves them both in darkness.

“Bloody hell,” Balthazar mutters in the dark, “now that’s a problem.”

“I had it changed recently, though,” Castiel says, reaching up and feeling for the bulb. Maybe it only needs to be moved – it’s not as if he has ever paid much attention to the electric system in the cellar and –

As soon as he touches the bulb and moves it a bit to the right, the light snaps back on again, but his hand _hurts_. It feels on fire and the skin is reddened, and blood pulses under it; for a second Castiel thinks he can feel everything that goes through his veins.

It almost feels _doubly_ alive.

That’s when he gets it.

“Balthazar, hand me that.”

Balthazar says nothing and hands him the journal. Castiel runs through the pages, re-reading his notes, looking at the sketches, and thinking, _if it was that easy?_

“Castiel?” Balthazar asks, but Castiel doesn’t hear him.

“Cassie?” Balthazar tries a minute later, and _that_ snaps Castiel out of it.

“I knew we were on a first name basis, but I think that’s –”

“You have been staring into nothing for the last two minutes or so. I had to get your attention, didn’t I?”

“I think I know what I have to do.”

“That wasn’t very helpful, darling.”

Castiel dismisses that – _darling_ isn’t worse than dear. He doesn’t mind much either. Right now, he doesn’t care about anything other than what he has just found out.

“Do you think that I have been dissecting corpses for a month because I wanted to fix a spinal cord?”

“I’m not _that_ stupid.”

“Good. Because that isn’t what I wanted to do.”

He takes the key to the ice cellar and opens the door. It’s cold inside, colder than it was at the beginning of the month, but Castiel isn’t taking any chances.

He turns on the light.

Dean is still lying on the table, pale and motionless, covered by a thin blanket that is absolutely useless but somehow gives the illusion that he isn’t dead for the first few seconds.

“Wait,” Balthazar says. “Something tells me that he was in that coffin we dug out the first day.”

“You’re correct.”

“And why exactly – oh, you _don’t_.”

 _No_ , Castiel thinks, _Balthazar isn’t stupid_.

“I do. Now, are you with me or not?”

Balthazar looks at the body first, then at Castiel, then at the body again. He shrugs.

“I think you’re mad, but if you can’t do it, it’s your loss. I am not the kind that breaks contracts.”

Good, Castiel thinks, because he’s going to need someone to help him. A small shock won’t be what will make this work.

\--

Three days later, he has read every book on the subject of electricity that was to be found in the town’s library. There weren’t many of them, but Castiel knows that he needs a lot of equipment. Not to mention that he’ll have to find a place that isn’t his cellar to do what he’s thinking about, but if he has to find out everything he needs piece by piece he will never manage to do this in timely fashion.

When he sits down at the table in the cellar, that evening, it’s clean for the first time since Balthazar dropped the first corpse on it.

“Darling, you seriously want to shock him back to life,” Balthazar muses from the other side of it. He looks as if he can’t decide whether Castiel is mad or a genius.

“Do you know of another way?”

Balthazar laughs at that, as if he’s unable to process the question. “I don’t know of _any_ sodding way to make a dead man live. Who am I to say you’re wrong? I sure pray that you aren’t planning on doing it for a job, though.”

“No. It’s only him,” Castiel replies, biting his own tongue. He shouldn’t have said it. Not when his voice could give him out.

Balthazar just stares at him again, then raises his hands and stands up.

“Your business, your money, darling. I suppose that you had something in mind to actually _do_ it, right?”

“I might make it up as I go, but I think I do.”

He’s so close he can almost taste it.

He only hopes that it isn’t too late and that Dean is still _there_.

\--

Anna visits him the next day. Castiel isn’t surprised that they sent her – she always was the only sibling of his with whom he was somewhat close. He isn’t sure about letting her in, but he can’t do otherwise. He realizes that among the rich red of Anna’s hair there’s some white, too. When did he last see her? He doesn’t remember.

“Listen,” she starts as soon as she sits down, “I don’t – Raphael has insisted for me to come for the last two weeks or so and I couldn’t refuse him anymore.”

“What does he want?”

“Well. He says that if you read his letter, you know already.”

Castiel sighs, shakes his head. “Anna, I am – I have a reason to do this. I can’t tell you or anyone else. I have done everything that was asked of me until now. But I can’t let this go. What I’m doing is more important.”

Anna sighs, and Castiel knows that she understands it even too well. She has been forced into marrying someone she hated, which is one of the reasons why he talks to her even outside familiar obligations.

“Are you _doing_ something or you’re… grieving?”

Castiel’s eyes widen and Anna’s answering smile is a sad one.

“Castiel, do you think that I don’t remember that you always were closer to him than to any of us? They don’t want to understand it, I’m afraid. But if it’s grieving… I understand it. I tried to explain Raphael that you need time, but…”

“I understand,” Castiel replies softly. “That’s… you were right. I’m not sure what good will it do, but you can tell them if they want to know so badly.”

“You know it won’t be good enough of an answer.”

“Next time maybe they should come themselves.”

Anna nods and Castiel hopes that he hasn’t taken the wrong path. But it will be easier if everyone thinks that he’s _only_ grieving.

\--

Balthazar gets in through the backdoor a short while later. The hems of his trousers are more dusty than usual, Castiel notices.

“It seems like I found you the place you wanted.”

“You did?”

“Well, granted that you can be content with it. Some fifteen miles from here, there’s an old mill that has functioning electricity but that no one must have used in a couple of years. There’s a large enough room at the top floor.”

“Excellent.”

Castiel _can_ really taste it now, not _almost_. He has all the equipment he needs, and the fact that there has been extremely sorry weather for the last week only makes him feel closer to his target. He’ll need a stormy night for it to work, but from the dark clouds he can see on the horizon, he thinks he doesn’t need to wait anymore. And it’s a Thursday, too. It feels incredibly fitting.

“If I were to do it tonight, when would you advise leaving?”

Balthazar thinks about it one second, glancing at the clock ticking on Castiel’s wall.

“At least another four hours. There shouldn’t be as much light as now, and considering what we’re bringing there, better to be safe than sorry. Is that enough time for whatever you need to do downstairs?”

“I have already done everything I needed to do,” Castiel replies. He has fixed the break in Dean’s spine with that same technique he used for his other patient, he has put fresh stitches all over again in place of the old ones. It’s a miracle that there hasn’t been much further decay – either it was Castiel taking good care of the body, or maybe his grandfather’s cellar was worth the money that was spent on it back in the day. It doesn’t matter.

Twelve hours from now, or maybe a bit more, or maybe a bit less, and Dean’s eyes might not be lifeless anymore.

He doesn’t even care about what might happen later.

Not that there’s _anything_ that will make him go back on this.

\--

While Castiel divides all of the equipment he needs between old suitcases – he can’t afford it to get wet – Balthazar deals with Dean’s body. Castiel would have rather done it himself, but Balthazar had a point saying that _he_ knew how to put the electrical stuff together, while Balthazar himself was the one that has spent the last five years of his life handling corpses. They cover both suitcases and body with enough blankets to hide the content of the wagon from everyone that might pass. Castiel wears old clothes and puts on a hat for the first time in the last ten years or so – he hates hats, but the last thing he needs is someone recognizing him. He sits in the back of the wagon, over the blankets, in the only space left free by everything else.

It doesn’t rain until they actually get to the mill, and it’s a good thing since as soon as they’re inside, they start hearing thunder.

“At least I can say that my life has been interesting, on my deathbed,” Balthazar mumbles as he walks up the stairs with his own bundle while Castiel brings the suitcases.

“I hope you will not go into details,” Castiel replies.

“Darling, considering that half of the reason my deathbed might end up being extremely comfortable will be what I earned thanks to you, consider yourself assured.”

That’s a point, Castiel figures. A pretty valid one.

\--

When everything is set and he drops into the top floor through the window on the ceiling, his clothes are heavy with rain and mud and dirty all over again.

Balthazar doesn’t look too impressed. If anyone saw them, they’d think that Castiel was the one getting paid to do this.

“Darling, will you just explain me why did you need to go on the wretched roof out of every place? Especially when it’s about to fall off?”

“I need electricity. If lightening hits the wires bringing energy to _that_ lamp,” he says nodding towards the lone, long dead bulb at the center of the ceiling, “then it will bring that also to _my_ equipment, since it’s attached to the central system.” Castiel nods towards another hole in the ceiling to which his machine is attached. He did all of that before climbing out of the window. “’m here because I need a strong jolt. Otherwise I could have done that in my cellar. I had to… get rid of some parts of that roof.”

Balthazar takes one of the two chairs available and goes to the opposite side of the room.

“Then you won’t be offended if I don’t stay close, do you? I wouldn’t like to accidentally catch some of that. I told you, I’m aiming to die on a comfortable bed.”

“Suit yourself. You did enough already.”

“Could I ask you one question? Personal curiosity. I won’t charge you for it.”

The thunder is still too far. Castiel has some time to spare.

“Of course,” he answers as he looks at Dean’s pale face and at the electrodes on his temples. Dean is lying on an old bed they found in the room; the machine is behind the bed’s head.

He’s tempted to reach out and smooth away hair from his forehead, but he won’t.

“Who is our lucky young man? Considering that you have thrown away your career one way or the other, he must be worth it.”

Castiel knows that. If this works, he will have created something that everyone would name abomination, not that he would have made it public. It’s _Dean_. He isn’t doing this for glory or for science. If it doesn’t work… well, he will have wasted two months during which he has lost most of his reputation, but Dean deserved that regardless.

“He was my friend,” he replies. “And he didn’t deserve dying the way he did when he did.”

It’s difficult to make out Balthazar’s face in the darkness, but Castiel can see him nod. “I’m starting to suspect that maybe he’s the one that colleague of mine that I brought you had the disgrace to run into.”

“How do you know?” Castiel would _really_ like to know how Balthazar realized it.

“Well, when I brought you that particular corpse and I told you who he was, you seemed fairly shaken. It was a lucky guess.”

“The dean was on that carriage.”

“You mean, our common employer?” Balthazar snorts. Castiel can see him putting a hand on his mouth, probably trying not to laugh fully. “I can see why you have a certain animosity towards him. Well, further animosity.”

There’s only silence after that. Castiel looks out of the window, noticing that the storm is coming closer. _Yes_.

By now the room is almost entirely dark. There was no light to begin with because the bulb is broken (the electrical system still works though, since the lamp at the entrance could be switched on), and now that it’s past midnight, the only thing Castiel can see is Dean’s face whenever lightening makes it visible.

“You know,” Balthazar says, “I think there is something you might want to learn about. Free information. Take it as a thanks for the opportunity that was working with you.”

“Which would be?”

“I told you that our friend Dr. Adler signed a piece of paper where it’s stated that it’s _him_ paying me for bringing him the bodies he needs.”

“You did.”

“I failed to specify that my own name is nowhere on it.”

“Do you mean that –”

“If that piece of paper became public, I wouldn’t be the one being in trouble for it.”

“And where would that piece of paper be?”

“That’s information for another day. I only wanted you to know that.”

Castiel would answer that – he _is_ interested, but then he hears a thunder much nearer the mill and opens the window.

The storm is almost over them.

And he doesn’t have time to worry about Zachariah Adler.

\--

He stands, going next to the leverage that he has to pull down in order for the entire thing to work. He’s thankful for the window on the ceiling through which he has hosted himself in before – it’s no good for lightening up the room, but it’s good enough to see when it’s the moment to push.

He isn’t sure that he has more than one shot at this.

 _What if it doesn’t work?_ , what was once the voice of reason and that now became traitorous says.

 _It will_ , Castiel thinks. It has to. It can’t _not_. And maybe – maybe if it does, he could finally find the courage to tell Dean why exactly he did it. After all… he can’t expect anything, but Dean wouldn’t outright be disgusted. Not when Castiel is doing all of this for him.

Right?

\--

For all the time he has worked on this, it’s almost strange that it’s over in a matter of seconds.

Castiel has his face raised towards the ceiling window; one moment it’s all dark, the other he sees white, and he doesn’t even think about it. He pushes down the lever on the side of the machine.

There’s hissing, and he has to jump away from the table Dean was resting on because sparks from his carefully put together equipment almost hit him in the face. He sees Dean’s body moving because of spasm once, twice, as the machine creaks, and there are sparks again, and then a moment later it dies and there’s only the sound of rain hitting the windows savagely, so loud that Castiel doesn’t hear himself when he clears his throat. He doesn’t even hear Balthazar’s steps as he approaches the table.

“Did it work?” Balthazar asks, barely audible. For once, he sounds completely serious.

Castiel wishes he knew – Dean’s face hasn’t changed, but the light is dim and he can barely make out his own hands.

“Wait a second. I knew I had to bring this,” Balthazar mutters taking a candle from the inner pocket of his coat along with some matches.

He lights it and Castiel has to blink twice in order to let his eyes adjust. He looks down at Dean. For a long, terrible second, everything is exactly as it was before the jolt.

But then Dean’s right hand twitches.

Twice.

He doesn’t open his eyes or speak, but his lips part and he takes in a small, shallow breath, and then another, and then another. Castiel reaches out, his hand shaking, taking Dean’s wrist between his fingers, gently. He moves his thumb where it should be, searches for –

“There’s a pulse,” he whispers, his own voice so thin he can barely recognize it.

“I’ll be damned,” Balthazar replies, and he’s looking at Castiel in something like awe. “He _is_ alive.”

 _I did it_ , Castiel thinks, unable to process anything other than the feeling of Dean’s pulse against his fingertip (it’s smearing dirt all over Dean’s skin, but he doesn’t even notice), or the way Dean’s lips are slowly turning from blue to pale pink, or the small quantities of blood timidly peeking from the stitches in Dean’s chin and neck and the other visible places.

_I did it. I did it. I did it._

\--

When Castiel sees Balthazar out of the back door, he hands him a handful of neatly folded bills.

Balthazar counts them and whistles when he realizes that it’s more than the agreed sum. “What’s that for?”

“For the… further services,” Castiel says. “You have stayed true to your part of the deal. And you deserve that bed to die on. Of course, when you speak about your interesting life…”

Balthazar chuckles as he pockets his money, patting his coat after he’s done. “Don’t worry, darling, I’ll be as silent as a grave. Which I realize wasn’t the best way to put it, given the circumstances. May your friend have better luck now than previously. And if you ever need to find me, you know where I am.”

Castiel nods and Balthazar disappears in the fog outside his house.

Maybe Castiel shouldn’t have trusted him this much, but he proved himself enough times, and Castiel probably has made it so that he’s on the right track to buy or rent a much nicer house, other than the soft and comfortable bed. Balthazar has no reason to tell anyone.

He grabs his jacket as he walks upstairs – he should get rid of it. It’s stained with dirt from the mill, and –

He gasps when he sees that there’s a piece of paper in his pocket. And as much as he’s hurrying to go back to his room, he has to stop to read it.

When he’s done, he smiles to himself.

Now he has enough proof that Balthazar won’t say anything, he thinks, and wonders if maybe he could count one more person among the ones he calls friends.

But it’s not time to think about _that_ now, is it?

He runs up the stairs to his room.

\--

Dean is lying on Castiel’s bed, still breathing steadily. He hasn’t woken up yet, but Castiel won’t allow himself to be worried for now. After all, he has been dead for two months – he couldn’t expect a full blown miracle. He also knows that he looks horrible and that he’s downright filthy – his clothes are covered in dirt and dust and rain water, and his hands have stained the covers and the sheets while he and Balthazar had put Dean into the bed. He took care to at least wash his hands after, but only them. He doesn’t have time for more.

Also, it makes sense that he should end this as dirty as he was when he dug Dean out of his grave, after all.

He thinks about what he should say. About how to explain it. About what they’ll do after, because you can’t come back from the kind of death Dean had (Castiel wishes he had died falling into the sea or any other way that wouldn’t have implied seeing him being buried), especially not when some of his fingers have the signs of a wheel passing over them. (Castiel has set all those bones, one by one, and they _should_ work properly, but there was no way to change that.) Or when you have neat rows of stitches carefully holding your skin together.

Or when there are two faint burns on your temple, where Castiel put the electrodes.

But it’s not what matters. To Castiel it doesn’t matter. Dean was always perfect to him and now he’s even _more_ perfect, because he’s here because of _his_ work.

And then Dean stirs, once, twice. His head turns, his eyes open oh-so-slowly (so green and so _alive_ , Castiel could weep in joy and maybe he _is_ crying after all). He blinks, trying to focus, and Castiel keeps still in his seat. Dean might not even remember him. He can’t allow himself to think that this will all go as well as it could.

“Cas?” Dean croaks, his voice barely audible and so rough from disuse that if he had said more than one word it wouldn’t have been understandable.

But to Castiel, it sounds sweeter than all the heavenly choirs would sound, if he could hear them. (He won’t ever hear them. If Heaven and Hell exist, he knows where he’s headed after this. He doesn’t care.)

“Hello, Dean,” he says, moving closer, his knee on the side of the bed, his clothes staining the white linen. He reaches out, so very slow, his finger slightly touching Dean’s cheek. It’s colder than it should be, and other than that Castiel has noticed that Dean’s heart beats slower than it should, but it’s no matter. Not when it _worked_.

“I –” Dean says, his throat obviously hurting. Castiel should have brought some water, but he’ll put a remedy to it soon enough. He nods in encouragement. “I was – I _died_ ,” he says, his eyes widening, and Castiel could cry in joy all over again. _He remembers everything_. Not only he _did_ it, but he has done it _right_.

“I brought you back,” Castiel whispers, not daring to touch further but not removing his hand either.

“You – _why_?” Dean’s eyes are so wide, so green, so _confused_.

“You deserved to be saved,” Castiel replies, and he can’t find it in himself to find the price he has paid too high. Not when Dean’s eyes are still staring into his and Dean is _there_ as he should be. As he _will_ stay as long as he should.

Not when his life has just regained its only source of happiness.

 

_Epilogue_

 

Dean spends the first week in a haze. He feels strange, out of place. He barely realizes what’s going on around him, and moving his own limbs is hard enough for him not to think about anything else.

The only things that he knows for sure are that he _died_ , and that Cas brought him back. How, he has no idea. When, is another entire question. The last thing he remembers is feeling pain all over and the sound of the bones in his hands cracking. They’re healed now, more or less. He can’t close his hand in a fist entirely, but that’s as far as the damage goes. He goes through the motions and he lets Cas walk him around trying to regain some balance – the first time he tried to stand up, his legs gave out after a step.

It’s only after those first seven days that he wakes up one morning with his head and vision clear. The world is not blurry or a haze anymore, and his limbs move when he wants to and not when they want to. And when he tries to actually _think_ straight, he finds out that it’s not so hard anymore.

Which is exactly when Cas gets inside the room with a cup of that kind of tea that Cas loves to pieces and that Dean always found so terribly bland, and he looks so _happy_ that Dean’s idea of asking him _what has he done exactly_ gets pushed to the end of the list of questions.

“Dean? How are you feeling?” Cas asks, handing Dean the cup. It’s fine porcelain. It feels completely foreign against his fingertips.

“Better,” he answers, taking a sip. It’s disgusting, but it’s good for throat – speaking has been hard, when it hurts as much as it does. He pretends to like it.

“I just realized that I hadn’t set foot here in years,” he mutters as he hands the cup back to Cas. Cas gives him a knowing nod, but he doesn’t say anything.

“It’s never too late, isn’t it?”

Dean nods as Cas leaves the room with the empty cup, and wishes he could make sense out of everything. But he can’t. He can’t even make sense of _how_ Cas even did this. Oh, he has always known that Cas was better than everyone else in the place he works put together, but there are miles between being a good doctor and… defying nature.

But more than that, there are other things he should ask.

When Cas gets back in, he takes a breath and gets to question number one.

“Listen, how – how are the others?” There’s no need to specify who _the others_ are.

Castiel takes a breath and sits next to him on the bed, though not close enough to touch. “Your brother has postponed the marriage for six months, but it is happening at the new date. Your father is working at the shop again. Sam insisted for a trial but the only result was that they hanged the carriage’s driver, not the person who was urging him to hurry..”

“How are they doing?”

“I haven’t visited as much as I could in the next month, but I met Sam two weeks ago. He’s doing better than I thought. He said that your father is, too.”

“Good. But I suppose I can’t exactly… go home and say hello, can I?”

Cas’s face falls at that, and Dean can’t help feeling a bit bad for it.

“I… didn’t tell anyone. But if I told, do you think I could have tried to bring you back at all? Someone would have stopped me.”

 _No, you couldn’t have even begun_ , Dean doesn’t need to say out loud. He does understand it.

“But I can try to… hint at it and see how the reaction is.”

“Don’t – I’m not so sure that it’s a good idea. If everyone else finds out, what happens then?”

Castiel doesn’t answer. Dean has an idea that it would be nothing good. Whatever Cas did, Dean could bet that it wasn’t legal.

He’s afraid to ask.

“What I thought. Don’t – it’s fine. We’ll see in a while. I more or less figured it out on my own. And – it’s better like this than down there.”

Which isn’t a lie at all – at night he dreams about an endless black void sucking him in and when he wakes up he’s cold all over.

He never tells Cas that, though. He has done enough already.

\--

It takes him two days to realize that maybe, just maybe, Cas shouldn’t be _here_ all day.

“Shouldn’t you… I mean, shouldn’t you be teaching?” he asks Cas. Cas’s lips curl up slightly, the way they do when Cas thinks he has said something particularly funny. Dean knows that smile. He has seen it since they were children.

“I should. But… it was never what I wanted for myself. You know that. I think I have more important matters on my hands now.”

Dean can’t believe that _he_ ’s supposed to be more important than all the years Cas spent working hard to get where he was.

But the way Cas looks at him, it’s obvious that he thinks that for real, and Dean should be worried, a lot more worried, but he can’t find it in himself to.

\--

When he finds out he has been sleeping on Cas’s bed, he says that Cas should give him the guest room, and Cas refuses without wanting to hear questions. When Dean feels good enough to discard night clothes, Cas gives him a stack of clothes that it would have taken him the earns of possibly two months to buy, if they were two very good months.

While he changes, he takes another good look at his body. His hands are ruined for good on the outside, even if they work fine, so he won’t complain about that. There’s a huge scar on his back running along his spine that he didn’t have before, and it’s red and angry-looking. It won’t fade anytime soon. He has managed to take off only one of his rows of stitches. It’s on his wrist. The skin has reformed, which means that at some point he will manage to take off also the ones on his chin and his cheek, but you can see the tiny holes left by the needle.

And there are those two burns on his temples.

As he dresses, he feels like some kind of freak show, and isn’t he one? He’s – he used to be _dead_.

But when Cas looks at him it seems as if nothing makes a difference to him and Dean won’t be the one saying it out loud, but it makes him feel slightly better. The way Cas always sticking with him when they were children used to make him feel better after his mother died and all of his other supposed friends vanished into thin air the second he had to take care of serious things.

Sticking with him seems such a pale metaphor, right now.

When your best friend since you both were five brings you back to life because in his opinion you _deserved it_ , everything seems like a pale metaphor.

Dean wishes he knew his own feelings on the matter.

Dean wishes he knew his own feelings about everything right now, but he only feels a great deal of confusion.

Then again, maybe he’s justified.

\--

He doesn’t even know how he stumbles into the cellar or what he was searching for. But when he does and sees three thick journals lying on the table, he can’t resist. He sits down and opens one, realizing that rather than a medical book as he had thought, it’s a blank journal where someone took notes. _Someone_. Cas. He could recognize the handwriting anywhere.

At some point he _does_ notice that the handwriting changes, but it’s… not that important in the great scheme of things. Not when he reads notes all written clearly and leaving no doubt to what was that research about.

He doesn’t know if he should feel awed, humbled, grateful or scared.

Maybe the four of them.

He has no time to ponder it though, not when he hears the door closing and Cas walks slowly and sits on the chair next to his.

“I shouldn’t have left them around, but maybe – maybe it’s better like this.”

“Cas, what – what did you _do_?” Dean asks, his voice still rough and his scarred fingers shaking as he closes the last book. “How _many_ people –”

“They were all dead already. I had no other choice. I had to find a way.”

Dean wonders if those corpses were ever returned to their graves. He thinks not. He should feel sick. Maybe he does feel sick, a bit. But still – he’s _here_. He has a life – some life, at least. If anything, he might at least get to see his brother getting married from afar, and that’s more than he could ask for. But that’s not _it_.

 _It_ is the way Cas is staring at him right now. It’s so intense that Dean almost wants to look down.

“I don’t regret any of it,” Cas says, slow, his hands moving from his knees to the table. “I’ll admit that there was some selfishness involved in that decision, but you – you never deserved that death, and you always deserved more than life ever gave you. I couldn’t let it go.”

“Selfishness?” Dean repeats, unable to grasp what _that_ would mean.

Cas shakes his head, moving closer. His hand is inching towards Dean’s wrist until it covers it. It’s warm, Dean thinks. So much warmer than his own.

Cas opens his mouth once, then he closes it, then he shakes his head and moves his hand down, covering Dean’s.

“Don’t you ever wonder,” Castiel asks, quietly, “why it ended that badly when you brought me to… that den of iniquity?”

Dean remembers that time even too well. He had thought that maybe Cas wasn’t interested in sex at all – absolutely insane by his standards, but not as if he was going to criticize. They had been friends for some fifteen years by then, he wasn’t going to care about that kind of thing.

“I just thought that maybe you… weren’t interested in any of that.”

“I wasn’t. There’s only one person I have been… interested in,” he whispers, looking down at their hands and then up at Dean again, wide blue eyes staring at him so solemnly again, and _oh_.

He had never even _considered_ it.

After all, Cas has always been the kind of person who stares too much, and since Dean can remember he has always tended to get in his personal space rather than keeping a proper distance. He had taken all of that for things that Cas just did.

He had never realized that maybe with him it was _different_.

“You mean that – you did this for –”

“That I did it all for you? Of course I have. I _had_ to try,” Cas replies, his voice getting marginally lower. “I couldn’t stand the idea of you being dead. You are the only thing I ever chose for myself in my entire life, and I was supposed to let you die such a senseless death?”

“And now?” Dean breathes out, wishing he had something to say. Something that might not be _wrong_ , but everything that comes to him sounds wrong. Whatever he thinks it sounds either insensitive or _not enough_.

“Now… Dean, I wanted you to know at some point. It’s your decision. Don’t feel as if you owe me.”

“Actually, I do –”

“No. You don’t. You deserved only good things, and you never were given as many as there should have been. You deserved to live. I only tried to make it happen. And I did it, but… I don’t want anything that you don’t want. And I never thought you would feel the same – I’m not expecting you to change your mind.”

The worst thing is that Cas actually is convinced of that. You can hear it in his voice – he isn’t expecting _anything_.

To be honest, that was one thing Dean never understood about him. That he never ever _asked_ for anything in the entire time they ever knew each other. He figures that it’s an effect of belonging to a family where they drill into you that choosing what to do with your life isn’t a main priority.

“Forget a second about changing my mind,” Dean says then. “You can’t still – I’m not even –”

“The only thing that isn’t right about you is that you had to be dead for two months.”

It’s the way Cas says it that makes Dean’s head spin. He sounds so sure of it. As if there is nothing else he wants in the world, as ruined as Dean is (because there’s no way around it – his hands, his body, his blood not running so hot anymore, his cold skin, his heart beating a lot slower than it used to; Dean _is_ ruined). Dean remembers that time when he told Cas that he envied his brother because he found the perfect girl for him, the one who’d love him until death do them part.

Maybe he has had his own in front of it all along. But it still wouldn’t be fair to either of them if now he lied and said that it was the same for him. He hasn’t even known until now.

Still…

He _does_ love Cas. He always has, even if not like _that_. He has never told Cas straight, sure, but Dean has considered him as close as family for… a whole damn lot of time. And it never came easy for him, and it came harder since Mary Winchester died, and he thinks, _what if it had been him and not me? How would I have felt?_

He can’t help answering, _I’d have felt as if half of me had gone_.

He licks his lips, then raises his head and looks at Cas again.

Trying and see if this damned confusing mess of feelings has some basis can’t hurt, right?

Especially not now, anyway.

“Listen,” he says, “I’ve never… even _thought_ that you could feel that way. For me. I’m not even sure I ever considered it, but… I think…”

“Yes?” Castiel’s voice sounds strangely small, and Dean hopes that he’s not ruining this with the next thing he says.

Except that he can’t find a way to word it that doesn’t make it seem as if Dean is doing this because he thinks he _should_ , and so he stands up, motions for Cas to do it too, and when they’re inches from each other he closes the distance between them.

Cas goes still when Dean kisses his cheek, just next to the corner of his mouth. It’s not even a decent kiss, by the standards Dean would have held before dying, not lasting even half a minute. Technically it’s not even a real kiss, since he didn’t even have the guts to do it fully, but he can’t seem to do more than this right now. But when Dean moves away, the grip Cas has on his arm doesn’t lessen at all.

“Dean?” he asks, and he sounds as if he can’t believe what just happened. “Don’t – you don’t have to –”

“Cas, it isn’t – I’m not even sure of what I’m doing, but it’s not because I think I have to. I wanted to see if – and maybe – I need to think about this, but –”

“I understand,” Cas replies, moving closer himself, his hands covering Dean’s cheeks. They’re shaking.

He can’t remember if he has ever seen Cas’s hands shake in their entire life. It’s no matter though – they’re still so much warmer than his own skin.

“May I? Stop me if –” Cas’s voice shakes as much as his hands. Dean interrupts him.

“All right.”

This time, it’s not such a sorry kiss as before.

It’s slow, and it’s obvious that Cas has never kissed anyone properly, but it’s still so very nice; his lips are so soft and so warm against Dean’s. The tip of Cas’s tongue traces his lower lip but that’s it – Cas doesn’t go farther. Cas’s hands are in his hair now, his fingers running through it tentatively, and when Cas sighs a little, Dean shivers. There’s no rush of blood as it used to, though, and he doesn’t feel certain parts of him awaken, but he’s not entirely sure that it’s because of Cas. It might be his own body’s fault.

Considering that his heart is now beating as fast as it used to at any given time when he was alive, it’s probably his body not behaving right.

When they part, Cas’s cheeks are flushed and he looks as if he’d die happy if he was to die right now.

Dean feels as if someone put a fist around his heart and clenched. It wasn’t even a serious kiss.

“I’m all wrong,” Dean whispers. “I shouldn’t be this cold. I should –”

“Dean. You aren’t. As far as I’m concerned, every part of you that matters was brought back right.”

“But –”

“It’s not even been a month. You haven’t adjusted. And even if this is it… I stand by my opinion. I don’t want more. I don’t need more. I didn’t even need that. I would be content just with you being here.”

Dean isn’t so sure about it getting better. In his experience, it rarely happens.

But even if he doesn’t, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Not when Cas’s hands are so very warm and when his lips look so very red, alive in a way Dean isn’t sure he will ever be again.

Still. It’s a life.

“You’re warm,” Dean says, inconsequently.

“Would you rather go upstairs?”

Dean nods and doesn’t oppose it when Cas leads him out of the cellar and inside his room.

When Cas pushes him under the covers, he doesn’t put any resistance. When Cas climbs over them and puts an arm around Dean’s waist, Dean doesn’t flinch. He thinks he might like this. It’s warmer.

“I don’t think I can –” he starts, but Cas shakes his head.

“That was more than I ever hoped for,” he replies, sounding awed. “I told you. I don’t expect anything else.”

“You – Cas, no one could –”

Cas shakes his head, interrupting him. “Dean, you’re not only your body. I did it for _you_ , not for a part of you.”

“I shouldn’t even exist.” Dean can’t help it – not when all his reactions are different from what he’s used to. Not when he can’t help remembering what was in those notes and when he can’t help thinking, _how could he even do it_?

“I’m afraid that I don’t care about such things. Not anymore. Not when it’s _you_. And I would do it all over again.”

It should be all so _wrong_ , Dean thinks. As wrong as he is.

But as Cas’s hand reaches forward and cups his cheek again, his thumb running over the row of stitches, Dean realizes that right here and right now, he doesn’t care. He closes his eyes, his head turning against Cas’s hand, and he isn’t feeling that cold anymore.

For now, the rest doesn’t matter.

 

\--

 

_There’s a piece of paper that Castiel always keeps on himself. In his coat’s inner pocket, in his shirt’s, on his nightstand._

_He still hasn’t made it public. Balthazar hasn’t lived where he used to for a while, and Castiel wants to make sure that he left this town for good before he makes a move._

_Far from him to risk a friend’s life._

_There’s a pile of letters on his desk. He doesn’t open the ones from his brothers or his parents. There’s one from Dr. Adler, threatening to take severe decisions if he doesn’t come back in timely fashion (meaning, right now). Castiel thinks about the piece of paper in his coat and does nothing._

_Soon, he thinks as he watches Dean sleep in his bed, Castiel’s own hand on Dean’s shoulder, moving to his neck once in a while, he will use it. He wouldn’t even do this for Dean, strictly – he’d do it for the both of them._

_Not for now, though._

_For now, he’s only content knowing that_ he did it. __

_And that if it came to Dean, he’d do it again, and again, and_ again.


End file.
